Tales I Don't Expect Or Need to Believe
Battered by icy highways,
both my cars are leaking gasoline,
the fragrance deathly but compelling.
Now I’m stranded in my cottage,
three cracked ribs aching inside me
like an old legend. Firewood to haul,
the zero light too pitiless
to support the myths some people
expect to sustain them. Maybe later
I can read about Salmoneus
and Tyro, or the loves of Minos,
tales I don’t expect or need
to believe. Maybe later a glass
of wine sweet enough to flatter
the heroes who ruined Troy,
then a movie on TV instead
of the critical study I told
myself I’d master tonight. Maybe
the gasoline smell has addled me,
or maybe it has restored
my former sanity. No one
fixes cars on frigid weekends
in January, no one cares
that the gasoline fumes shape
ghosts more vivid than those
Aeneas conjured. Only if fire
erupts to rouse the neighborhood
will any one note that I’m wearing
the expression the Minotaur
wore when with bare hands bloody
and writhing Theseus dispatched him
at the center of the labyrinth
where our monsters should be safe.
Bio:
William Doreski's work has appeared in various e and print
journals and in several collections, most recently Waiting for the
Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009).